EVIE1 - 1 on 1 TDG

[mad-bax]

Evie: Ted is a great player. I play a number of SG's with him and I hate being UP after him 'coz he always corrects something I've done. He's a bit of a girl when it comes to war though. He nearly bottled out of a dust up in a deity game just yesterday IIRC. (coincidentally against our not-so-good friend Ceasar).

I'm glad you joined "the other thingy" You will learn more there than here. Just make sure you speak your mind and give lots of feedback. Though I can't really imagine you keeping quiet somehow

 

[Superevie]

I don't think it's possible to shut me up. I'm like this real life too. Scary, huh?

Thanks for everything! I'll post my save tonight with an adjusted title, like you requested.

(Oh yeah, thanks for the lovely complients from everyone as well! )

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by Arathorn
I would either found 2S of where you got the settler (gets the game, the horse, and is on a river) or 1W of where you are now (on a river, defensive benefit of a hill, get the horse). I don't like red dot because the horse is not within the fat-X 21 of that city spot and you can easily lose it to another city.

I considered those possibilities too. But there are horses much nearer home so I discounted them and looked for the best ROI in terms of food & shields.

It just goes to show why Civ is such an interesting & absorbing game. Three players and three different suggestions

Poor old Evie's head must be spinning

Originally posted by Arathorn
The key is that ANY benefit from this city is a net plus. Just don't put in too many buildings and don't be afraid to abandon the city if it gets under too heavy an attack. Maximize its benefit, yes, but it's a free gift and doesn't (CAN'T) hurt the development of your core at all -- unless you let it.

My sentiments exactly.


Ted

 

[TedJackson]

Originally posted by mad-bax
He's a bit of a girl when it comes to war though. He nearly bottled out of a dust up in a deity game just yesterday IIRC.

Duck!


Ted

 

[Superevie]

I'm back cats and kittens! Here's my log:

End of turn 20: Settler S 1. :starts biting nails down to nubs:

Turn 21: Scout N1. Founded St. Petersburg. Start a warrior. Worker mines sqaure. Other scout E1.

Turn 22: Palace expansion. (means nothing ) Scout near cap. goes E1. Other scout N1.

Turn 23: Learned alphabet. Starting writing. Jacked up science slider to 90%. Granary done. Starting spearman. Scout nears cap. goes SE1. Other scout N1. Dialed up Joan. She only have 10 g, so I can't do anything good.

Turn 24: Moved scout near France N1, NE1. Scout goes SE1.

Turn 25: Same scout goes SE1. Other scout goes N1.

Turn 26: Citizens in moscow are unhappy. It's too crowded. Put a citizen on entertainer duty. Scout near Mos. goes E1. Other scout also goes E1.

Turn 27: Order restored in moscow. Worker starts road in same spot. Scout near cap. goes E1 and the other one goes E1 too.

Turn 28: Spearman done. Starting settler. Moving spearman to spices. Scout near cap. goes NE1. Other scout goes E1, SE1. Can see orange borders. What's crackin' Libby?

Turn 29: Mobed scout E1, NE1. Other scout NE`. Libby only has 10 gold. Useless...

Turn 30: Put citizen back to work on the new mine I made. There will be growth in one turn, so there won't be any rioting.. Moved worker NW1. Scout near cap. goes NE1. Other scout goes NE1, E1.


This was a rough set of turns, and I think I was okay. Tell me what you guys think!

 

[denyd]

A couple of points:
1. If you had sent the worker to road to ivory, when the capital expansion occured, you'd have a lux to the capital and wouldn't have needed to use the entertainer.
2. I'm not sure where the spearman is headed to. Is there something to be guarded (city/colony) at that site?
3. Early in the game it's easier to keep an eye on cities and watch when they grow, so you can prevent the disorder. You have a 1 turn grace period from the growth until the riot to prevent the loss of production.
4. It's probably because I'm used to playing higher levels, but I'd have tried to move the gift settler to get the gems in range, 3 SW moves would have done it.
5. Don't forget to contact the AI often for possible trades. You might be able to get a worker or some new tech.

 

[hotrod0823]

lurker's comment: More importantly than having a luxury hooked up is learning to use the slider. By moving the slider up to 10 or 20% you could've avoided the entertainer. I think Moscow must have been at size 4 correct? IIRC On regent 3 citizens are born happy, by the time the 4th rolls around you need MP's or Lux taxes. Like Denyd said check the cities often 1 turn of rioting is a huge waste this early. Use F1 to make sure every one is Okay. As long as the number of unhappy citizens is less then or equal to the number of happy citizens the city will not riot. The number of content doesn't matter.

Entertainers are bad, you want all your citizens to be working. If they are not then you will be wasting turns.

The slider would most likely only be up for a few turns, ie until you get a unit there for MP duty (could've kept your spear at home to do this), hook up a lux or build a settler or worker to drop your population.

IMO it may still be too early for a spear. 2 warriors would be a better use of shields. One to stick around for MP duty a second to travel with your next settler or to go to your free city as an MP.

The only other thing I would question is the increase on researching of Writing. Writing is a very expensive tech and even at the high research spending is probably not much lower then 40 turns. I think I would leave research at 10% and try a minimun science run at writing. The min turns for any tech is 40 and by setting at 10% you can generate cash for other things, upgrades, trades etc. and still have a good shot at getting a good/expensive tech cheaply and in some cases sooner than the AI. It is not uncommon to see min science runs up the path from Alphabet - Writing - Lit/Map Making. Each 40 turns. Each generating cash and having huge trade potential.

[re-lurk]

Enjoy and hope you are learning. It wasn't too long ago most of us were in your shoes.

Hotrod

 

[Darkness]

@Evie: Hotrod and Denyd are right. Avoid entertainers in the early game. That's just lost production, food and commerce. Rather set the luxury slider to 10-20% to prevent riots, just like Hotrod and denydsaid.

Another tip: The early game is where you win or lose. When a city (especially if it's your only city) grows in the early game, always check it for happyness, and raise the luxury rate if neccessary. This way you can prevent riots and you won't waste a very important turn of production....

 

[Tarkeel]

About the free settler, I would have moved the scout NW-W, and then followed up with the settler W if no barbs close.

This location gets you river, hill (for defence bonus), 1 BG at the start and atleast 1 more later. You will have both floodplains and game for food, and the horses

Build order would have been warrior-worker-spear, even though I hate building regular spears, I think a barracks would take too long here.

Except for the long walk home, the other reason for building on that side of the Romans is to put pressure on them, and deny them the close in spots for their own cities Always nice to have a forward base.

As others before me have said, entertainers are no-go at this stage You are much better off using lux sliders, and if you are working a roaded river square you will actually gain gold this way (as well as food and production)

 

[mad-bax]

3050BC: Pre-turn
Trade Ceremonial Burial to Caesar for Alphabet + 20g
Science slider to 90%. Writing in a predicted 20 turns.
Settler S.
I will deal with the settler question in a separate post.

3000BC:
Settler SW (game)
Scout 2NW - spots magenta borders
Worker 2 SW. This is a BG on a river. It is a powerful tile (as opposed to the tile the worker was on). Once mined and roaded it will give two food, 2 shields and 2 commerce. It will also connect up the road a bit. This is necessary to get luxuries and resources made available to other cities apart from Moscow.
Scout 2 E

2950BC:
Scout 2 SE, S
Settler SW
Scout 1 N, NW
Meet polite Joan who is still broke and stupid. She lacks 4 techs.
Caesar still hasn't finished researching iron working.

IBT:
Moscow Granary - Settler
A more conservative approach would be to build a warrior here. It is just a question of risk. My personal play style is to send early settlers unescorted, as they will generally be founding cities close to the capital. From time to time I may lose 1. But it is very rare, and usually because I have done something stupid.
At this point I only need 10 food to fill the bin, because of the granary. As it happens there is 5 food in the bin now, and that means Moscow will grow in 2 turns. There is nothing I can do to reduce that time. So the citizen that is working the ivory tile can stay there for the moment. That situation will have to change soon though.
You will also see from the picture, that it will only take 5 turns to build the settler. That is actually too fast. If we keep spitting out settlers at that rate then Moscow will reduce in size over time. If you are clever, and can be bothered, it is possible to use the "shield surplus" to build other things, without interrupting the flow of settlers. This requires a technique called micromanagement.

2900BC:
Worker mine tile
Scout 2 - 2 SE
Found St. Petersburg - worker.
This is actually not what I wanted to do. Unfortunately I couldn't do what I wanted to do in ten turns (if you see what I mean).
Again, a more conservative approach would be to build a warrior first. But, as an agressive player I can see that in 10 turns I will have a worker. In 21 turns I can chop the game forest, which will give me 10 shields and so a "free" warrior, and I will also have built another worker in that time. So my tactic here has the potential to give me 2 workers and a warrior in 21 turns. If I build the warrior first, after 21 turns I will only have a warrior and a worker. The trade off is that barbs or Ceasar have 11 turns more to just walk in to the town.

Red dot is where I wanted to send the settler
Yellow dot is where I actually sent the settler.

 

[mad-bax]

2900BC: Continued.

Moscow has 3 content citizens and will grow in two turns. There is nothing I can do to reduce that time. So I leave the citizen on the ivory.

2850BC:
Scout N, E
The people love me (as well they should).
Scout 1 2E. Being as near the top of the map as he is, I can be pretty sure that no other civs are north of Joan. East is the most likely location of any other civ.
Scout 2 SE

Now. Moscow is going to grow to size 4 next turn. Because this is regent level and you have one military unit garrisoning the city, your first 3 citizens will be content. Any more than that are unhappy. If you play with the governor controlling population happiness, your next citizen will be a clown. Clowns can be used to stop your city rioting. However, they are not productive. They can't work a tile. This means that you don't produce as much food, shields or commerce as you otherwise could. The devastating effect of this is on food. The clown eats food, but doesn't produce it. This will reduce your food surplus and completely mess up your settler factory. In the early game as a rule of thumb don't employ clowns.
We have decided to keep control of happiness ourselves (though you probably didn't know it). I'm not going to employ a clown, or touch the luxury slider. Let's hit "Next Turn" and see what happens.

2800BC:
Scout 2 - E,
Scout 1 takes small detour to pop a hut. 2S for 25g.

Moscow is now size 4, and looks like this.

We have 3 content people and 1 unhappy person. But Moscow hasn't rioted. We have been given a turn of grace. Notice also that the food bin is empty. Because we are still working the ivory tile it will take 4 turns for Moscow to grow again. Aha. We have a little work to do. I click on the ivory tile, which gives me a clown. Then I click on the BG tile currently being mined by the worker. So now I get my unhappy guy back. I am also making one less shield, but Moscow will now grow in 3 turns. The settler is still due in 3 despite making fewer shields. Magic.
We still have to do something about the unhappy guy. So F1 gets me to the sliders. If I increase the lux slider to 10% one of the content citizens becomes happy. So now we have the same number of happy and unhappy citizens, and Moscow will not riot.
So this is very simple micromanagement. I was hoping to keep it out of the thread altogether, but your initial choice of settling on the spot put the ivory tile in the city radius, and that means having to do this micromanagement to keep the settler factory effective.

Two other small points. You won't have to move the lux slider up again in 3 turns because at the instant Moscow gets to size 5 it will spit out a settler and drop to size 3. At that point you can turn the lux slider back down again. Secondly, every time Moscows size changes you will have to repeat the process in the paragraph above, because the stupid governor will put the new citizen back on the ivory. He will never learn.

Now it's safe to press "Next Turn"

2750BC:
Scout 2 - E
Scout 1 S. This was a I needed to send him NE. Now I will have to retrace my steps. :suicide:

2710BC:
Scout 1 - E, NE
Scout 2 - 2NE
We get a settler next turn

IBT:
Moscow Settler - Settler

2670BC:
So I do my Micromanagement chore and move the citizen off the ivory
I can also turn the lux slider back down.
I need to decide where to send the settler. For now I am going to do something silly and just send him NE following the river. After this set of turns, we'll have a go at a dot map and develop a proper settling plan.
Settler NE
Scout 2 E, NE
Scout 1 N, NE

2630BC:
Scout 1 E
Settler NE
Worker road tile.
Scout 2 NE, revealing horses and Ivory.
Although it's not in the turnlog, I have been checking the diplomacy screen EVERY turn. I know (pretty much) that Ceasar is researching Iron working. That's because he needs it for his UU (Unique Unit) the legionary. I am interested in obtaining IW myself, mainly because I am ready to develop a city layout plan, and knowing where Iron is will influence that. At this stage I could not care less about swordsmen. If I decide to use swordmen then I am confident that if we have iron anywhere we can hook it up in short order. If we haven't, then we can use horses. However, whether or not we use swords, we need iron. I am already looking ahead to the age of steam. I also want to know if Caesar has iron. Again, this is because he needs it for his UU. If I can see it, then I can tell if he has it hooked up, and that will tell me what to expect when we kill him. I will be able to plan timing, pillaging and generally develop a low risk, high gain war strategy. I can hardly wait.

2590BC:
Hmmm...
Scout goes north, revealing a hut to the East. Because the scout has 2 movement I could pop it right now. If I do, then I will definitely not get a settler. This is for two reasons. Firstly I am building a settler in Moscow. So in the same way that you won't get a tech you are currently researching from a hut, you won't get a settler from a hut if you are building one. I could temporarily change Moscows build to something else while I pop the hut. Unfortunately it won't do me any good in this case. That's because I have another settler on his way to some unknown and dodgy destination up north. So unless I settle him right now and also change Moscows build, I am not going to get a settler. So I just pop the hut for Iron working. Poor old Caesar. At this point I would be very tempted to just give away iron working to all the civs around. This would be to stop Caesar selling it when he got it, making loads of money and upgrading all his warriors to legionary. I found out recently that the AI tends to spend lump sums on unit upgrades. Instead I test Caesar to confirm that he is researching IW. So I ask him what he'll give me for it. 30g. So I would infer from this that he is indeed researching IW and is 2 or 3 turns from getting it. We have 3 "gettable" sources of iron. It must be christmas. Ceasar can get some pretty soon if he tries hard enough. For the purposes of this training game that's good. I want us to have to deal with legionaries.

Settler NW

EOT

 

[mad-bax]

Before I launch into this, I just want the few people who don't know already, that I am not the font of knowledge for all things Civ. I wish I were. So, particularly Evie, please don't take any notice of this particular post, because it is more for my benefit than anyone elses.

The settler, where he stands is north of Rome, the other side to our prospective core. At that distance I will only get 1 spt from any town there in the forseeable future. Therefore the only thing I can make up there are workers. Fortunately, the irrigated game will give 4fpt surplus so that means I can pop rush later if required.

The Romans will be our first port of call. As such defending a city up there will be problematic. The only way to do it would be to get Joan in on our side and hope that Roman units going north east will be hampered by her long enough for us to get some defence there. Diverting units from an offensive to defend a useless town would not be a good idea IMO.

We could just leave the town undefended, and treat it as a Roman town. The town would be captured and then recaptured towards the end of the war. However, if we do that then we can't build workers, because it would then be likely that the town would be razed rather than captured. If we are in Republic at the time (God forbid) that would hike up War weariness.

Another thing we could do is keep Joan out of it, and give her the city at the start of the war with Rome. At the moment Rome doesn't appear to have a source of horses, therefore gifting the city to Joan would continue that happy situation.

Lastly, we could abandon the city, and leave it to chance as to whether Joan or Ceasar takes the horses, and a decent site.

At the point of war declaration we would have a stream of undefended workers attempting to get south to the core, and they would likely be picked off.

Anyway you look at it, a city up there is only of marginal benefit.

For this reason I would have taken the (to some people) reckless decision to attempt to get the settler to the wheat bonus floodplains. I would have settled on the plains so that only one FP tile was worked, thus reducing the probability of disease. Without improvement the town would be +4 food, so I only need to get 2spt to produce a worker every 5 turns. Since our settler factory is on a 6 turn rotation, on its own this town would provide about the right worker/town ratio for our needs. This town would be highly beneficial to our cause, and on its' own could be a game winning gambit.

Again, this whole thread is prefixed by IMHO, and I would value the opinions of anyone who has one.

 

[mad-bax]

Turn 21:
Soon I am going to start using uppercase when giving you hints about worker actions.
That tile stinks. If you mine a BG you will get 2 shields. If you mine a BG on a river you will get 2 shields and 1 commerce. If you then road the BG on the river you will get 2 shields and 2 commerce. Once you have mined and roaded the tile the worker is on now it will give you one shield and one commerce, exactly the same as a completely unimproved BG on a river. That is a complete waste of 10 worker turns. You don't even have the fig leaf of pretending that the tile is on an important route to another potential city site.
As punishment you get to suffer the full force of this smiley.

Again you could hike up science spending to get alphabet that bit quicker, or, as I did, just buy it from Ceasar.

Turn 23.
Researching writing is good. Jacking up science spend to get it as quick as you can is what I would do at regent. You could if you wished reduce science spending so that writing would arrive in 40 turns. At this level you could well get lucky, and then you would have lots of money to spend on upgrading all of our warrior The trade off is that you might not get it, and it flys in the face of the objective I've kind of forced you into, which is to out-research the AI. At higher levels you would need to start the game with alphabet to stand any chance of the 40 turn gambit to writing working.

The choice of spear is what I expected you to do. You did it because you are scared of the AI. I on the other hand hold them in complete contempt . The correct build choice here is either warrior (conservative) or settler (aggressive).

Turn26:
I suspect this happened to you because you normally play with the governor controlling citizen moods. You can play quite happily like that in a single player regent game, it's fine. In an SG however, Governors are always turned off no matter what level the game. My turnlog deals with how you should look after your peoples happiness well enough for now.

Turn 27:
Although this wouldn't have been the tile I would have chosen to work, roading it now after mining is the correct thing to do as it saves 2 worker turns. 1 to get off the tile and 1 to get back on it again later when you decide the road is required.

Turn 28: I am not sure why you want to move the spearman to the spices. Leaving him in Moscow would have at least saved you the effort of playing with the lux slider every few turns. In despotism each of the first 2 garrisoning units will make an unhappy person content.

Turn 29:
You met England. Despite being expansionist she doesn't appear to have found the wherewithall to pop many huts. So she is broke and stupid like Joan.

So, another solid set of turns
You need to start getting to grips with the value of the different types of tile. To play with tanks and artillery you need to be able to build them, and that ability comes from the land. Once I have convinced you of this maybe you will print off crackers guide and make it your bedtime reading for the next few months. OTOH you might have a life, which will put you in a minority of 1 on this site

 

[a space oddity]

On the settler discussion: I would have made him do the long hike. Sure it's a risk, but it 'll be a long time before anything usefull will come from that city located where it is now, a constant distractor of the mainstream strategy. It's a gamble with free money to try to walk him home, I would've.
The longest distance where it's feasable is when you need two cities to bridge the gap IMO, this is a long way further away. Just my 2 eurocents.

BTW this is a point in favor for those who scout with wariors...

 

[mad-bax]

OK. My last post on this set of turns.

Right now we are about to start building settlers. What we need to do is decide where to put them. There are lots of ways of doing this. Here is my list.

OCP: This stands for Optimal City Placement. This strategy attempts to place cities in such a way that their 21 tile fat X's don't overlap, and don't leave many tiles that can't be worked either. The advantage of this is that late in the game each city will be able to work 20 tiles and become very large and powerful. You will be able to build stuff very quickly. Also you save a lot of money in infrastructure build and maintenance costs. This is because the cities are spread out, so you have fewer of them. Each bank, or factory gives you more bang for your buck. The disadvantage is that you need to get a long way into the game before you can get a city above size 12. You need hospitals which become available with sanitation. That means that for over half the game you will only be able to work half the tiles under your control.

ICS: Infinite city sprawl. This is pretty much the opposite of OCP. Cities are packed very close together. This is very powerful in the early game as a very high percentage of the tiles under your control are worked. So the shield/food/commerce output for your entire civ is very high. Defense is easier too because even 1 movement units can move from city to city in 1 turn via roads.
The downside occurs at around steam power. ICS prevents cities becoming very big, so the expensive late game improvements and units take a long time to build, you need more of them and because you have more of them the maintenance costs are higher. Also because the build density is so high you have a large number of cities, and so corruption is much more of a problem.

RCP: Ring City Placement. This is the current flavour of the month and quite controversial. By placing cities at the same corruption distance from the capital or Forbidden Palace the total corruption suffered by your empire is significantly reduced. This method is actually exploiting a limitation in the software, and this is why it is controversial. The downside of this is that you have very little choice as to where you place cities. This means you could have to build more aqueducts, and leave bonus resources unworked. You also run the risk of making a mistake in calculating the corruption distance, and that can ruin your day.

All these acronyms get on my nerves. Perhaps we should set up a Fanatics Acronym Reduction Team

The last method that I am going to describe doesn't have a name, but is usually referred to as a dense build. Cities are placed in locations that take advantage of the terrain, but at a density that allows the city to get to size 12. Normally around 11 tiles per city. This allows all the tiles to be worked, and gives you access to every tile in your lands early in the game. It is a compromise that I personally find myself using most of the time. This is mainly because I am thick, and don't have the intelligence to execute the Acronym'd methods effectively.

I can only find a link to RCP ATM, but I'll look for the others and edit this post. The cut down descriptions are good enough for our purposes.

Having decided on your placement strategy, you need to create a dot map. Every SG does this AFAIK. I have provided a link to a couple of examples. The main thing is that you communicate your intention clearly. The style you use is up to you.

Dotmap 1

Dotmap 2

I want you to create a dot map, showing the locations of 10 cities.
Then I want you to give the order in which you would create those cities and why. 10 cities would be a reasonable target for around 1000BC, though a lot depends on other things: it could be more, it could be less.

Just to stress you further. When placing cities you need to decide straight away what they are going to be used for. Our capital for instance is a settler factory. That is all it does (for now). That means it needs a granary and the ability to generate 30 shields and 20 food every 6 turns. It doesn't need anything else. You might decide a city is capable of generating lots of shields. In this case it might be a good unit producing city. So it will need a barracks and enough shields to churn out units quickly.
Try and think of some other types of city and tell me what each dot will do

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by mad-bax
Turn 27:
Having mined that stinking tile you may aswell road it.
I still don't think I'm placing enough emphasis on this point.

A rule of thumb that I use is:

Never move a Worker off a tile until it has a road on it!

 

[Darkness]

Originally posted by Padma
A rule of thumb that I use is:

Never move a Worker off a tile until it has a road on it!

I use the same rule, otherwise I'll end up with a lot of wasted worker turns. I think that, especially in the early game, wasted worker turns must be avoided at all costs.

2 exceptions though:

1- 4000BC: I've decided to move the settler (after I've spotted a better place to settle with my scout) and there is a more powerful tile to be worked fist.

2- To save the worker from barbarian raids (or AI assaults during an early war).

 

[mad-bax]

Originally posted by mad-bax

Turn 27:
Having mined that stinking tile you may aswell road it.
I still don't think I'm placing enough emphasis on this point.

In retrospect, in trying to make a point my choice of language was poor (to say the least).

What I should have said was...

Although this wouldn't have been the tile I would have chosen to work, roading it now after mining is the correct thing to do as it saves 2 worker turns. 1 to get off the tile and 1 to get back on it again later when you decide the road is required.

I apologise for the way the original comment reads. It wasn't intended to be offensive.

As Padma and Darkness both point out this is a general rule which you cannot go very far wrong in sticking to.

I've taken the liberty of editing the original post with the modified version.

 

[Smellincoffee]

FYI, Evie was banned for spamming. (Off-Topic, Member's Pictures V)

 

[Ankka]

Yup. She couldn't resist herself. She was warned.